NASA magnetosphere mission to be launched tonight
MAR 12, 2015
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.028702
New York Times : A fleet of four identical spacecraft is set to be launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this evening aboard an Atlas 5 rocket. The satellites will assume a tetragonal formation in orbit above Earth as part of NASA’s two-year, $1.1 billion Magnetospheric Multiscale mission to study the planet’s protective magnetic field. That field protects Earth from the radiation of the Sun’s solar wind. However, how the field reacts when struck by solar flares is poorly understood. The arrangement of the satellites will allow researchers to image the magnetic field in three dimensions.
© 2015 American Institute of Physics
